We turn to the
latest news in the so-called "kids-for-cash" scandal in Pennsylvania, in
which judges took money in exchange for sending juvenile offenders to
for-profit youth jails. In 2011, former Luzerne County Judge Mark
Ciavarella was convicted of accepting bribes for putting juveniles into
detention centers operated by the companies PA Child Care and a sister
company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care. Ciavarella and another judge,
Michael Conahan, are said to have received $2.6 million for their
efforts. Now the private juvenile-detention companies at the heart of
the kids-for-cash scandal in Pennsylvania have settled a civil lawsuit
for $2.5 million. The state has also passed much-needed reforms aimed at
improving its juvenile justice system and ensuring such abuses are not
repeated. We are joined in Philadelphia by Marsha Levick, chief counsel
of the Juvenile Law Center, which helped expose the corrupt judges and
represented the families’ class action suit.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEENSHAIKH:
We turn now to the latest news on the so-called "kids for cash" scandal
in Pennsylvania, in which judges took money in exchange for sending
thousands of juvenile offenders to for-profit youth jails. In 2011,
former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted of accepting
bribes for putting juveniles into detention centers operated by the
companies PA Child Care and a sister company, Western Pennsylvania Child
Care. Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, are said to have
received $2.6 million for their efforts.
Some of the young people sentenced under their watch were jailed over the objections of their probation officers. In 2009, Democracy Now!
spoke with one of the young people who spent almost a year in one of
the juvenile detention centers after being sentenced by Judge Ciavarella
as a first-time offender. This is Jamie Quinn.

JAMIEQUINN:
I was about 14 years old, and I got into an argument with one of my
friends. And all that happened was just a basic fight. She slapped me in
the face, and I did the same thing back. There was no marks, no
witnesses, nothing. It was just her word against my word. My only
charges were simple assault and harassment. And I didn’t even know that
charges were pressed against me until I had to go down to the intake and
probation and fill out a whole bunch of paperwork.

AMYGOODMAN:
I asked Jamie Quinn in 2009 about the action Luzerne County Judge Mark
Ciavarella took in her case after taking bribes to do so. This was her
response.

JAMIEQUINN:
It just makes me really question other authority figures and people
that we’re supposed to look up to and trust. I mean, Ciavarella has been
a judge for a long time, from what I know, and a well-respected one, is
what I thought. And obviously not. It just really makes me question and
not trust other people. I mean, if someone like Judge Ciavarella could
do this, then it makes me believe that anyone can betray the law and—I
don’t know.

AMYGOODMAN:
Well, now the private juvenile detention companies at the heart of the
kids-for-cash scandal in Pennsylvania have settled a civil lawsuit for
$2.5 million. The state has also passed much-needed reforms aimed at
improving its juvenile justice system and ensuring that such abuses
aren’t repeated.

For more, let’s go to Philadelphia to Marsha
Levick, chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center, which helped expose
the corrupt judges and represented the families’ class action suit.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!,
Marsha. Just lay out this latest settlement, which follows an earlier
one a few years ago, and just the horror of this. These two judges who
were found guilty of bribing are in prison now?

MARSHALEVICK:
The two judges are in prison. The latest settlement is a fairly
straightforward settlement, as you described it: $2.5 million that will
provide further compensation to the juveniles. I really think that this
is an opportunity, obviously, to close another chapter on what happened
in Luzerne County.

And I would add, I think, really listening to
the story leading up to this about the private for-profit centers
elsewhere, it’s really important, I think, for us as a country, I think,
for your listeners, to know that while we can talk about what happens
in private centers, some of which, frankly, are not-for-profit, the same
kinds of abuses can occur in state-run facilities, as well.

NERMEENSHAIKH: What do you see, Marsha Levick, as the wider implications of the settlement that was reached?

MARSHALEVICK:
I think that the wider implications are for us to continue to shine a
spotlight on how we, as a country, treat children who are convicted of
crimes. We treat them harshly. We—I think that this notion of whether or
not private centers are providing the same services as public centers,
we need to ask ourselves: What kind of services do we want to be
providing for children?

In Pennsylvania, I think that by exposing what
happened with the judges scandal, we’ve also had an opportunity to
achieve great reforms. We have really changed statutory policies in
Pennsylvania with respect to children’s right to counsel, with their
ability to obtain appointed counsel on their own, presuming that they in
fact don’t have financial resources to do that. We have eliminated, for
the most part, shackling in Pennsylvania courtrooms. We have provided
and required that judges give a statement of reasons. So when judges in
Pennsylvania commit children to public or private-run centers, they need
to have an explanation for why they’re doing that. And I think the
kinds of stories that we’re hearing about what might be happening in
Florida or California, for example, we don’t have the same kinds of
protections. We don’t have the same kind of transparency in place.

AMYGOODMAN:
In 2011, Sandy Fonzo confronted former Judge Ciavarella outside the
courtroom after his sentencing. Fonzo’s son, Edward Kenzakoski, was
sentenced by Ciavarella to a youth jail and then a four-month boot camp.
Edward committed suicide in June of 2010. Confronting Ciavarella, Sandy
Fonzo blamed the judge for her son’s death.

SANDYFONZO: My kid’s not here! He’s dead, because of him! He ruined my [bleep] life! I’d like him to go to hell and rot there forever!

SECURITYGUARD: Ma’am, come on.

SANDYFONZO:
No! You know what he told everybody in court? They need to be held
accountable for their actions. You need to be! Do you remember me? Do
you remember me? Do you remember my son? An all-star wrestler? He’s
gone! He shot himself in the heart! You scumbag!

AMYGOODMAN:
That was Sandy Fonzo, whose son committed suicide after being put away
by Judge Mark Ciavarella. She was yelling at him right outside the
courtroom after he was convicted. Marsha Levick, we just have a minute.
Do you feel that justice has been done in this case?

MARSHALEVICK:
Oh, I think we’re still in process. There are a couple of defendants
whom we are still litigating against. I think that we have achieved
remarkable progress. I think that the settlements, I think that the
convictions of the two judges and their current incarceration are all
putting pieces of the puzzle together. But I think—again, I think as the
story leading up to our conversation this morning illustrates, there’s
much more to be done across the country. This is a national story. It’s
still a national problem. And I think that these conversations,
hopefully, are wake-up calls about the kinds of reforms that we need to
continue to be thinking about for our kids.

AMYGOODMAN:
What’s happened to those prisons for kids in Pennsylvania, the ones
that were involved with bribing the judges who are now in jail?

MARSHALEVICK:
They continue to operate. And they—the litigation was not about
conditions within these facilities. They continue to bribe—to provide
services. This was really about—really, primarily, the action of the
judges, their behavior in the courtroom, and how they were so willing to
remove children from their homes with really very little due process
and very little regard for their rights or interests.

AMYGOODMAN:
Marsha Levick, we want to thank you very much for being with us,
co-founder, chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center based in
Philadelphia. The Juvenile Law Center helped expose the corrupt judges,
is now involved in the families’ class action suit.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.Benjamin FranklinOne has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.Martin Luther King

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."Abraham Lincoln

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”James Madison